by Rose Rushe
FEW first-time novels take top prize in national competition. Fewer still are shortlisted in British fiction awards. Happily for Dónal Minihane, a family man with an absorbing career as hotel manager, he secured such accolades with the publication of ‘Cliona’s Wave’ and other works.
Find out tonight at his signing and reading in The Locke Bar and George’s Quay, 8pm, Thursday 9.
On the basis of three chapters of ‘Cliona’s Wave’ being submitted, he was shortlisted for the 2013 Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair. Naturally, the book proper was called in. But there was no finished manuscript, just his opening chapters.
As Dónal tells it, he took a week out of work from running Hotel Doolin, rented a cottage and penned another 40,000 words.
The ensuing work is one of imagination but draws down on the true story of great aunts within his family. One took holy orders as a missionary. The other became pregnant aged 16 and was sent to Magdelene laundry run by Good Shepherd nuns in Cork.
She bore a son; was kept in for years; left for England. Never spoken of at home, Dónal and his generation came to appreciate her life only on meeting her 40 year-old son at her funeral, the boy who given up for adoption. It was a shock, uninvited insight to how the Ireland of 1950s and ’60s handled sexuality and its consequence, insight to his own known and loving family’s dynamic; insight to his great-aunt’s callous treatment and isolation.
Dónal Minihane’s novel of two sisters has a subplot concerning involvement in the old IRA and that long shadow of gunmen.
Meet the modest Mr Minihane (ex Ardscoil Rís, UL and Shannon College of Catering) at his Limerick launch this Thursday April 9 in The Locke Bar George’s Quay, 8pm.
Everybody is welcome.
